


this ain’t a movie reel (don’t be afraid to love)

by curtici



Category: Outer Banks - Fandom
Genre: Angst, JJ Needs a Hug, Lots of Angst, mentions of abuse, touchstarved jj
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:34:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24782404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curtici/pseuds/curtici
Summary: jj maybank has always been slightly averse to love. he thinks there might be a reason why, but he’s not a therapist so he can’t be bothered to figure it out.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 40





	this ain’t a movie reel (don’t be afraid to love)

jj maybank has always been the silent type.

sure, he'll talk until everyone has all but tuned him out and there are days where it's a pure blessing to have a moment of silence around that kid. sure, he'll say whatever he needs to to get out of trouble, and sure he seems like an open book when you look at him from the surface. but jj maybank doesn't talk. not about his family, not about his home life, not about the fact that sometimes he'll sleep on a tree branch on god-knows-what-street because he can't go home because it's tuesday night and his father has definitely been drinking and john b's place can sometimes feel suffocating when you've stayed there for two weeks straight and it's not even your house. jj maybank does not talk about those things.

it's always been a touchy subject for him, even before his mom left and his dad first started building the museum of empty whiskey bottles that littered the small trailer's floor. before jj had heard what it sounded like to hear a rib crack and before he learned how to strategically cover up his bruises with tall socks and heavy boots and long sleeves even in the summer. before he wordlessly claimed the pullout couch in the chateau living room for nights when it was extra bad, and before big john started to call jj "son," and before jj knew that that word could carry so much love even when it's directed at him. before all of that, jj strayed far away from gushy, girly, "be safe" called out as he leaves on his dirtbike, "what's wrong?" when his eyes are red and puffy, "love you" as the end the phone call type of feelings. he just wasn't that kind of person. would jerk away involuntarily when his mother put a loving hand on his back, would let his hands lie limp at his sides when his grandma tried to hug him, would escape to his room whenever the conversation got a little too mushy for his taste. and if he was a psychologist, he would have been able to figure out why he did all of those things long before the bad stuff even happened; before he was given a reason to hide away.

maybe it was a really fucked-up away for god to foreshadow his life. maybe, just maybe, he was giving him the chance to learn when he was younger so, by the time his mother abandoned them and left jj to pick up the pieces of both him and his broken father, jj was an expert at retreating; cowering. or maybe jj could just chalk this up to a one-time showing of his psychic abilities. either way, jj had gotten good at holding it all in.

so after everything went to shit in his life, after his mom left for california and jj went from living in a 2-bedroom house on the water, decorated with paintings on the walls that said “family” and beds with extra blankets, to a rundown, dirty trailer in the depths of the cut, after his dad painted his insides with liquor and coke and pills and whatever else could kill him faster, jj closed up completely. no one was getting in, and nothing was getting out. and he knew that everyone around him had sensed a change, but they all chalked it up to the divorce, or the move, or the fact that he‘s practically a teenager now, and he’s just in his “hating everything” phase, and he’ll grow out of it eventually.

but john b didn’t accept it. for months, the greasy-haired, five-foot-zero troll with a knack for history and a scarily good ability to drag any information he wanted out of someone, dogged jj about everything that was going on in his life. and, to give him credit, he was as gentle and compassionate as a ten year old only child can be. jj, however, wasn’t having it, and there was an incredibly long month in which jj and john b did not speak. during which jj felt like he had lost everything, and he hated himself for it. hated that he had managed to push every single person in his life away: his mother, caroline maybank, who realized that her shitty world with a kid she never wanted and a shotgun marriage was not the life she wanted to live; his father, who had buried his head in a bucket of alcohol and drugs and only ever exited it to beat his son for whatever trivial topic he picked that day; and now john b, who had been the only person in his grade who could tolerate him since he could remember, who had offered his home and food and boat and weekends and father to jj all because he noticed that he was sitting alone in the cafeteria on the first day of third grade.

eventually jj came to his senses, realized that john b was the best this miserable little life was going to give him, and that he needed john b as much as he needed his lungs to breathe. but, as an emotionally bankrupt, distant child who never learned to say sorry the right way, jj did only what he knew to do: plopped down next to john b where he was sitting on the sidewalk at recess and pulled out a dead, pungent fish he had caught the night before. as a peace offering.

john b will never let him forget that.

after that, jj was different. not bad different; just different. he was more affectionate with his friends (and even some people who weren’t his friends, because fifth grade was the year jj had his first kiss, in the back of the schoolyard with some girl whose pigtails he pulled all throughout the year). and as jj grew up, he met pope and kiara and eventually accepted them enough to allow them into his life (not too far, just enough so that they think they know the whole story. he can’t let too many people see the true tragedy of jj maybank’s life, plus he hates the pity looks they’d give him if they knew). he’d kiss them on the cheek and share the pullout with them on nights when it was just too late to drive all the way home, and he’d hug them when he’s proud of them and god jj maybank was a sucker for a good hug. he’d hit on kiara, and say i love you to them way too often, just so that they know. and he meant it, too.

if jj looked at the shift in behavior he experienced in the years following the end of his old life, he might have noticed that the transformation from overly icy to extremely affectionate might have been some kind of overcompensation. like the longer he went without a hug from his father meant the more touron girls he would eventually bring back to john b’s place to spend the night. pope, ever the observant one, was definitely thinking that, but he would never say it out loud, because jj doesn’t do feelings talk, or family talk, or any talk that doesn’t allow him to crack a joke to ease the tension. jj is a talkative man, but he doesn’t talk about that.

and maybe if pope did say something, he might say that his recent behavior was "caused by a depravity of physical affection at home, leading to a subconscious yearning for the lost touch elsewhere" or something, and jj would have just made a joke about how smart he was and then the conversation would be over, because jj maybank was an excellent deflector and pope didn’t know how to finish the conversation after that.

so yeah, jj maybank will be practically unstoppable when going off on a tangent about the movie he had seen recently (maybe partially due to an undiagnosed case of adhd and partially due to the fact that it was a “really good movie guys, come on”). and yeah, jj maybank will love on his friends and be affectionate, if only to fulfill that bullshit scientific fact that you need eight hugs a day to survive (at least that’s what he’ll tell his friends if they ever get too nosy into his touchiness, and yes he has planned this conversation because if you show up to your friend’s house on more than one occasion with a split lip and bruised ribs, they’re gonna start asking questions about your home life). but jj maybank doesn’t open up about his family, and maybe that’s a good thing. at least then he doesn’t have to subject them all to the torture he’d endured ever since he saw his mom’s bags packed in the living room and learned for the first time what whiskey mixed with weed smells like on a man’s tongue.

**Author's Note:**

> written at 2 am, not proofread but i think the message is still there. also, there was so much more i wanted to say about jj, but it either didn’t flow right or i couldn’t find the right words, so maybe i’ll add another chapter? who knows


End file.
